Scholarly Talks in 2024
SCHOLARLY TALKS:
An Introduction to the Liberal Arts and Classical Education
Jake Tawney
With more and more classical schools coming into existence, there is an increased need to answer the basic question: What is classical education? Although there are notable differences from one implementation to another, there are also key core characteristics. Join Jake Tawney, Chief Academic Officer for Great Hearts Academies, on a tour through the seven liberal arts, the foundation of classical education, and the basic principle guiding the content and pedagogy of each discipline.
Teachers as Intellectuals, Not Technicians
David Diener
Many 21st-century teachers view themselves primarily as technicians: they are professional educators who have been trained with a set of skills that, when correctly employed, will produce the desired outcomes. In this seminar, however, I argue that teachers should view themselves primarily as intellectuals, not as technicians. Teachers are master learners whose primary job is to model a life of learning for their students and to lead students on a path of learning that they also are traveling. In addition to examining the conceptual differences between these two paradigms, I also will consider some practical applications of this understanding of teachers as intellectual guides. I will focus in particular on how teachers conceive of their purpose, how they interact with students in and out of the classroom, and what teachers and administrators alike understand to be excellent teaching and worthwhile professional development.
Jane Austen’s Advice to Instagram Girls
Colleen Sheehan
Social media is having a devastating effect on the emotional and mental health of America’s youth, especially teenage girls, as social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has demonstrated. Social media thrives on the superficiality of unexamined opinions and accusations—or first impressions. This is the very phenomenon Jane Austen warns against. “We have all a better guide in ourselves,” Austen teaches, “if we would attend to it, than any other person(s) can be.” Sheehan will explore Austen’s advice about coming to know – and trust – ourselves, and how this might be an antidote to some of the problems of our time, including and especially for the Girls of Gen Z.
Civics and the Liberal Arts
David Bobb
Strong civic education must be grounded in the liberal arts. This session will explore how to build a civics curriculum and civic culture in your school and classroom that upholds the liberal arts tradition, resists politicization, and teaches students what it means to be an American.
The Revolution of the Great Conversation
Anika Prather
A talk about how the Great Conversation brought about liberation to all of us.
Plato and Aristotle on the Purpose of the Law
Christopher Frey
Contemporary liberalism attempts to navigate the fragile balance between autonomy and oppression—between securing the individual good of the citizen and the collective civic good. Liberals are reasonably wary of laws that codify a single objective conception of the human good and compel all citizens to pursue it. I will discuss a very different conception of the law and its purpose that Plato and Aristotle defend: that the purpose of the law is to bring about virtue, and therefore happiness. According to these philosophers, individual and common goods are not opposed. Their conception of the law is far different from what is now presently accepted and few are willing to adopt these ancient proposals. But understanding them better allows us to see the deficiencies in the present political consensus more clearly. In particular, it will allow us to see how the state can exist for the sake of a good life, and not for the sake of life only.
The Jewish World of Alexander Hamilton
Andrew Porwancher
Drawing from his award-winning book from Princeton University Press, Professor Porwancher’s lecture debunks a string of myths about the origins of this founding father to arrive at a startling conclusion: Hamilton, in all likelihood, was born and raised Jewish. For more than two centuries, his youth in the Caribbean has remained shrouded in mystery. Hamilton himself wanted it that way, and most biographers have simply assumed he had a Christian boyhood. With a detective’s persistence and a historian’s rigor, Dr. Porwancher upends that assumption and revolutionizes our understanding of an American icon.
The Soul of Civility: Timeless Principles to Heal Society and Ourselves
Alexandra Hudson
Alexandra Hudson will argue that there is an essential difference between civility and politeness. Too often, whether they want more or less civility, people conflate these terms. But she thinks it’s imperative we disambiguate them to better understand the terms of engagement we want in society. Politeness is manners, technique, behavior. Civility is a disposition of the heart, a way of seeing others as our fellow human beings with equal moral worth, and worthy of a bare minimum of respect in light of that moral equality and human dignity.
Crucially, actually respecting others requires telling hard truths, and having robust debate. Sometimes, respecting ourselves requires setting boundaries, and telling people no. Telling hard truths, and saying no to others, is uncomfortable. It feels impolite. We fear offending others. But in fact, it’s an important means of respecting the dignity of others, and ourselves.
Her book, “The Soul of Civility,” is a sweeping history of social norms across history and culture written in the hope of changing the way you view the role of manners and morals in human social life. (published by St. Martin’s Press October 10, 2023)
Why do Families Choose Classical Schools?
Albert Cheng
Dr. Albert Cheng from the Classical Education Research Lab at the University of Arkansas will present data on the growth of classical schooling. Come learn about how large the growth has been, why parents are increasingly choosing classical education for their children, and what this all means for teaching, learning, and leadership in classical schools.
The Myth of Relevance and the Relevance of Myth
Edward Mulholland
We are a few decades into a trend that argues that students are best served by reading things that are “relevant” to their lives and to the “real world.” It is interesting how this only seems to apply to academic subjects. Nobody thinks gym training is useless because it uses especially crafted weights (as opposed to hay bales or the opposing team’s defensive linemen) to target specific muscle groups. This talk shall argue first that the “real world” as defined by pedagogical fads is a moving target at best, an ideological fiction at worst. And second, drawing on Stratford Caldecott, that the truths communicated by myth and fantasy are often more real than today’s headlines, indeed often “deeper magic from before the dawn of time.”
Michael Oakeshott and “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind”
David Rothman
Michael Oakeshott (1901-’90) was an English philosopher and political theorist who wrote about a great range of subjects, including education. His brilliant yet often overlooked essay “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind” (1959) presents one of the most compelling and carefully developed concepts of civilization as a conversational process in the history of philosophy. In particular, Oakeshott calls for greater attention to be paid now to the voice of poetry, by which he means all artistic creation, along with the voices of practicality and of reason, as we seek to lead rich, meaningful lives in in an open, free and democratic society. Oakeshott’s argument has profound implications not only for how we understand the arts and their role in our lives and in society, but also for how we approach the entire process of education.